Halo 3 not HD: runs at 640p, pixel counters claim

Halo 3 has quickly come under fire for disc-read errors and scratched discs, but now some tech heads on the Beyond 3D forums have found what they believe to be evidence that the quintessential game of Microsoft's 'all games in HD' console runs natively at a paltry 640p -- not 720p, not HD* -- and then upscales.

How did they come to this conclusion, you ask? By counting pixels. (Is this what we've come to as gaming enthusiasts -- measuring a game's visual fidelity with spyglass in hand?) ... Remember when we just played games?

Still, if true, Halo 3 would not be the first Xbox 360 game to compromise resolution for performance. Perfect Dark Zero also runs at 640p, and it's well known that Bizarre Creations dropped Project Gotham Racing3 even lower, to just 600p, in order to achieve an acceptable frame rate. But this is Halo 3, and if you press your ear to the screen you can already hear the snarling internet mobs gathering up their pitchforks and nooses.[*Note: We define "HD" as a resolution no less than 1280x720 pixels. According to the source, Halo 3 has a native resolution of 1138x640 pixels.]